Archive/File: imt/nca/nca-02/nca-02-16-responsibility-09-02
Last-Modified: 1997/04/21
Nazi Conspiracy and Aggression, Volume Two, Chapter XIV
WILHELM FRICK
[Page 654]
B. FRICK'S PARTICIPATION IN PROMOTING THE NAZI
CONSPIRATORS' ACCESSION TO POWER.
Frick has admitted that he was one of the men who helped
Hitler to power (3043-PS).
(1) Frick's activities in early days of conspiracy. In the
very beginning of the Nazi Party and its conspiracy, Frick
misused his various governmental positions in order to hold
a "protecting hand over the National Socialist Party and
Hitler." This he stated solemnly in his speech before the
Munich People's Court during the Putsch trial (3119-PS; see
"The Hitler Trial Before the People's Court in Munich" (Der
Hitler Prozess vor dem Volksgericht in Muenchen), published
by Knorr & Hirth, G.M.B.H., Muenchen, 1924.)
When Hitler was arrested during those early revolutionary
days, Frick used his position in the Munich Police
Department to release him under his own authority (3124-PS).
Frick participated in the Nazi Beer Hall Putsch of 8
November 1923-9 November 1923, and was tried with Hitler on
a charge of complicity in treason. He was convicted and
received a suspended sentence of one year and three months
in a fortress (3132-PS).
Hitler's appreciation of Frick's assistance during those
years is demonstrated by the fact that Hitler honored Frick
by men-
[Page 655]
tioning his name in Mein Kampf, the Nazi bible. Only two
other defendants in this proceeding, Hess and Streicher,
share that honor. In this reference Hitler said of Frick:
"He [Munich Police President Poehner] and his coworker
Dr. Frick are in my estimation the only men in
government positions, who have the right to collaborate
in the establishment of a Bavarian Nation."
(2) Frick's activities as member of Reichstag. Having been
elected to the Reichstag on 4 May 1924, Frick stated that it
was his task not to "support, but to undermine the
parliamentary system" (2742-PS)
In the Reichstag Frick immediately proposed those
discriminatory measures against the Jews which were enacted
after he and the other Nazi conspirators had come into power
in 1933. On 25 August 1924 Frick demanded in the Reichstag
that all Jews be removed from public office (3128-PS). Two
days later he returned with a motion calling for "special
legislation for all embers of the Jewish race"
In 1930, a significant investigative report was prepared by
the Prussian Ministry of the Interior (2513-PS). This
official report analyzed the criminal activities of Hitler,
Frick, and other Nazis. It stated that Frick had to be
regarded as the most influential leader of the NSDAP next to
Hitler. This document reported that at the 1927 Party
Congress in Nurnberg, Frick said that the Nazi Party would
first infiltrate into parliament and misuse its privileges,
then abolish it and thus open the way for racial
dictatorship. The document also reported that Frick stated
in a speech in 1929 at Pyrite that this fateful struggle
would first be taken up with the ballot, but that this could
not continue indefinitely, for history had taught that in a
battle "blood must be had and iron broken." As early as
1929, according to this same report, Frick announced that a
Special Peoples' Court would be created, in which the
enemies of the Nazi Party would be called to account for
their political acts (2513-PS).
(3) Frick's activities as Minister of Interior and Education
in Thuringia. Frick's prominent role in helping to bring the
Nazis to power was recognized when on 23 January 1930 he was
appointed Minister of the Interior and Education in the
German State of Thuringia, the first ministerial appointment
controlled by the National Socialists
It was in this capacity that Frick began his manipulation to
provide Adolf Hitler with German citizenship, an essential
step
[Page 656]
toward the realization of the Nazi conspiracy. It must be
remembered that Hitler at that time was not a German citizen
and was regarded by the Prussian police administration as an
undesirable alien. This lack of German citizenship was most
damaging to the cause of the Nazi Party because, as an
alien, Hitler could not become a candidate for the Reich
Presidency in Germany.
In the beginning, Frick was unsuccessful when he tried to
grant Hitler German citizenship by appointing Hitler as
police officer in Thuringia, thus conferring German
citizenship automatically. Later he succeeded with a similar
maneuver. This was expressly confirmed by Otto Meissner,
former State Secretary and Chief of Hitler's Presidential
Chancellery, in an affidavit which reads in part as follows:
"Frick also, in collaboration with Klagges, Minister of
Brunswick, succeeded in naturalizing Hitler as a German
citizen in 1932 by having him appointed a Brunswick
government official (Counsellor of Government). This
was done in order to make it possible for Hitler to run
as a candidate for the office of President of the
Reich." (3564-PS)
During his tenure as State Minister in Thuringia, Frick
again misused his official authority in order to advance the
Nazi conspiracy through measures designed to establish Nazi
control over the police, and over the administration and
curriculum of universities and schools. Three of his
measures are specially note-worthy:
(a) Appointment of the Nazi race theoretician, Dr. Guenther,
as Professor at the University of Jena, against the wishes
of the faculty.
(b) Compulsory introduction in the schools of Nazi prayers
whose nationalistic, militaristic, and blasphemous character
was such that three out of the five were declared
unconstitutional by the German Constitutional Court on 11
July 1930.
(C) Infiltration of Nazis in the Police, which twice
provoked a rupture in the administrative relations between
the State of Thuringia and the Reich Ministry of the
Interior, and resulted in the withdrawal of the important
police subsidy payment of the Reich to the State. (3122-PS;
3128-PS)

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